To know me is to know that I have a weird obsession with the Bluebeard fairytale. To be one of the few who really, really know me is to understand why.
At times I have felt that I was the wife of Bluebeard that survived, at times I have felt (rather happily) that I was one of the ones who had died and was released from the pain of the relationship..... but then at times.... I feel like I am Bluebeard himself.
We see him as a villain, we want to make him a complete and total monster....but humans aren't like that. He gave a key to someone he trusted and said look after this, but don't look into it. It was a test. A test to see if a boundary that was established would be treated with respect. In the past I have felt like he set up his wife for failure....knowing full well that he would be disappointed.... and maybe he did. Maybe I do the same too.
And maybe I am both Bluebeard and the wife..... tempting myself, setting up myself for failure. I wave a key around and say "see the key but go no further" and then I push myself down those stairs....open that door....and only see carnage and panic.
I know this is vague. I know that this post makes little sense to anyone but myself.
I wrote this for me because I'm trying to figure out what I see when I open that door...
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Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). Renascence and Other Poems. 1917.
| 23. Bluebeard |
| Sonnet VI |
| THIS door you might not open, and you did; | |
| So enter now, and see for what slight thing | |
| You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid, | |
| No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring | |
| The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain | 5 |
| For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, | |
| But only what you see…. Look yet again— | |
| An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless. | |
| Yet this alone out of my life I kept | |
| Unto myself, lest any know me quite; | 10 |
| And you did so profane me when you crept | |
| Unto the threshold of this room to-night | |
| That I must never more behold your face. | |
| This now is yours. I seek another place. |